Editorials/Accolades for The Duke/Mexico's New Seriousness
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS ACCOLADES FOR THE DUKE by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. D efore all interest in this year's .1.3 presidential election fades behind the Republic's oncoming concern about the pennant races, the...
...Charging the Bush campaign with McCarthyism, jingoism, warmongering, furtive associations with Central American drug runners, mudslinging, and a yearning to return America to the British royal family has been a clever campaign gambit...
...Perhaps President Michael S. Dukakis will make the Hon...
...If Governor Dukakis could say what is really on his mind he might well be demanding full citizenship for household pets once they have reached majority or lived in their residence for sixty days, whichever came first...
...I tried...
...Jimmy Carter his first Supreme Court nominee...
...Heretofore Mexico has decayed steadily in the sun, its corrupt authoritarian system creating multitudes of enemies at home and enormous indebtedness abroad...
...PRI has cultivated Marxist hopes and rhetoric for years...
...The explanation for this changeis that Governor Dukakis has no issues, at least none that he dares mention...
...Governor Dukakis offers no compelling policy suggestions for securing us still more peace...
...Now under President de la Madrid andpresumably under his like-minded successor progress is being made toward democracy and a modern growth-oriented economy...
...It was an eminently competent campaign before the wizard Sasso arrived, and it has been even better since Mr...
...The attempts to modernize Mexico's economy are also going to present difficulties...
...Past profligacy has burdened Mexico with a staggering debt, the servicing of which consumes more than 6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product...
...Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Post column syndicated by King Features...
...Nor are many of us moved by the Governor's pledge to transform America into Massachusetts...
...America is now riding high on one of its greatest economic booms...
...Within the cavernous hall and to an audience abundant with members of his Institutional Revolu ^ tionary Party (PRI), President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado mounted a merciless three and one-half hour address after which he departed a free man and to much applause...
...The road ahead will be rocky...
...But the Cuban reMEXICO'S NEW SERIOUSNESS 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1988 mained gloomy, even when I remarked that he should be proud of his socks...
...Now its concerns rush from the sensible to the fantastical...
...The majority of the American electorate does not seem to care if George Bush is a practitioner of McCarthyism, jingoism, warmongering, mudslinging, etc...
...During the 1960s and with growing intensity throughout the 1970s liberal-ism radicalized...
...The only thing that friends of democracy and free markets can do for Mexico from outside its borders is cheer and turn to their governments and banking systems to ease Mexico's growing regimen of debt payment...
...Alas, my expectations were dashed...
...There are only two things that obscure the tremendous competence of the Dukakis campaign...
...Perhaps not as elegant as flyfishing but rather like the bullfight or bearbaiting...
...President de la Madrid has cut back subsidies, sold government-owned businesses, and introduced foreign competition...
...Mexican presidents hold office for six years during which they usually steal vast amounts of boodle...
...Not even the dozen or so protests from President de la Madrid's opposition cheered him...
...To be nominated at one of these synods of zealots, one must placate every glassy-eyed enthusiast in the joint or be very liberal oneself...
...Despite the snickers of the local sages, I am proud of the campaign Michael S. Dukakis has run...
...D efore all interest in this year's .1.3 presidential election fades behind the Republic's oncoming concern about the pennant races, the hurricane season, and autumnal colors, let us take a last look at politics...
...In Washington and on Wall Street constructive plans to relieve this burden are urgently needed lest Mexican politics become an even more brutal blood-sport...
...Yet my Cuban friend need not abandon all hope for Mexico...
...During his speech President de la Madrid's opponents chided him for stealing the July election for his successor, though PRI's slim majority suggests that electoral fraud was held to a historic minimum, and during PRI's dictatorial 60-year regime no such organized outburst ever disrupted a state of the nation address...
...He might promise land reform and a peasant uprising...
...Sasso brought in his pranksters and naughty boys...
...No more is it simply a potpourri of statism, selective libertarianism, populism, anti-Communism, and socialism, with the poetry about social justice thrown in...
...Thus in early September I was eager to accept a personal invitation from Mexico's president to what he rather ominously termed his "last" state of the nation speech...
...His white shirt was actually gray, and he was in all respects a depressing package, except for an astonishing pair of striped yellow socks, possibly of silk, the kind that one sees on fey English aristocrats strutting in Mayfair...
...It will get better still...
...Moreover, "La Barnba" was jingling from the public address system...
...Over the short run this process has been dreadfully painful, sending the country into its worst economic days since the Depression...
...Even Teddy Kennedy has been heard to say that Governor Dukakis's brand of liberalism surpasses his in alcoholic content...
...Hence, Governor Dukakis dare not mention what he really wants to do for America...
...He is running a very competent campaign...
...Governor Dukakis is, of course, very liberal...
...He will be a clear winner on November 8 if he can count on all drunks of voting age, those who believe in Santa Claus, the clinically insane, and most members of the National Education Association...
...Now a New York Times/CBS News poll has come out showing that Vice President Bush has changed the election "into a contest about his issues and has sharply diminished Michael S. Dukakis' image as the more competent leader...
...Opening the government to opposition will allow undemocratic opportunists to prey on the government's past corruption and suppression...
...This brings us to his second difficulty, to wit—he has given us no pressing reason to prefer him over the instigators of all this peace and prosperity, the Republicans...
...Possibly his audience realized that President de la Madrid is capable of going on for another couple of hours—the second wind he exhibited in his rousing finale terrified many of the journalists...
...Heretofore Mexico has been a heavily subsidized economy, costly to foreign investment...
...Yet a large number were wearing ceremonial dress stylishly modeled after that worn by the late Napoleon Bonaparte's dining room personnel...
...Below our 2,000-mile southern border an ideal breeding ground for a Castro-like revolution has been developing...
...He might insist that laboratory rats be read their constitutional rights before any experiments begin and that immediate relatives be compensated for damages...
...True, when I arrived at the starkly modern Legislative Palace it was surrounded by thousands of grim soldiers, most in combat attire...
...note its blatant support for the Sandinistas...
...I congratulate the Governor for his reticence...
...I have always thought that history gave Jimmy a bum rap...
...As with every Democratic presidential candidate since 1968, Governor Dukakis presents himself to the American electorate after having passed through the inconvenience of a Democratic national convention...
...What is more, America is at peace, and even international terrorism—a grave menace in the late 1970s and early 1980s—has abated...
...Add to the 43 percent of the American electorate that always votes Democratic the percentage of our fellow Americans who are morons, and campaign manager Sasso has edged his candidate towards a majority...
...Its first difficulty is that in point of fact there is no very good reason to elect Michael S. Dukakis President...
...Perhaps what makes this Cuban propagandist so morose is that in Mexico people like President de la Madrid are mysteriously serious about reforming the economy and government for the good...
...As I have stressed so often in my scholarly reflections, politics is essentially a blood sport...
...I have never witnessed a public hanging...
...There are few signs that the boom will end soon...
...From the sound of the president's invitation, I assumed that upon finishing his speech he would be whisked to the gallows...
...He was wearing a soot-colored suit, cut, it appeared, from cardboard...
...All Governor Dukakis can say is that it cannot last forever, and that not long ago he met a fellow on Skid Row whose disposable income was beneath the national mean...
...I commented that back home his hairy boss would just be warming up about the time that President de la Madrid had subsided and that Fidel would enliven his bull with dozens of stirring threats...
...At any rate, the occasion was a letdown for me, and even the Cuban correspondent seated next to me seemed depressed...
Vol. 21 • November 1988 • No. 11
